Iranian people on a beach in the city of Anzali , in the Caspian Sea province of Gilan, northern Iran

TEHRAN, June 11. /ITAR-TASS/. The working group for the Caspian Sea legal status has gathered in the coastal city of Ramsar, Iran’s north.

The meeting is attended by the five coastal states — Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

Russia is represented by presidential special envoy, ambassador at large Igor Bratchikov. Delegations of other countries are led by deputies foreign minister.

The purpose of the two-day meeting is to prepare the Caspian Sea summit for drafting the sea’s legal status. The summit will be held in Astrakhan (Russia) this autumn, IRNA News Agency says.

Until 1991, the Caspian Sea legal status was regulated by the USSR-Iranian treaties. After the collapse of the USSR the sea’s legal status has not been determined.

At the previous meeting in Moscow in April, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called for reaching an agreement on the Caspian Sea status as soon as possible.

“It is necessary to work out a comprehensive and stable legal status based on the principles and norms of international law, the five coastal countries’ consensus and their sovereign rights and jurisdiction,” Zarif said.

On Tuesday, June 10, the Iranian parliament ratified the Agreement on Security Cooperation in the Caspian Sea. The agreement was signed by the Caspian leaders in Baku on November 18, 2010. The agreement envisions cooperation between the coastal countries to ensure security on the basis of international law and the principles of the UN Charter.